Product Description

Fun is in the Balance! In a race against time, players attempt to "one up" each other by pulling Kiwi Disks from a teetering wall, and daring to stack them ever higher. The last player to successfully stack a disk, before the timer marble drops out of sight, wins Wallamoppi!

Balancing games seem to be quite popular, and there is no shortage of these
dexterity games. The latest in this genre is the strangely-named Wallamoppi,
wherein 2-players compete to remove “kiwi discs” from a pyramid and stack them to
form a tower without causing it to topple.

Out of the Box seemed to spare no expense in the game’s production. There are 36
thick, wooden discs, 18 each in natural or dark finish. The box itself is also
wood, and is actually used as an intriguing timer mechanism. The components fit
securely in a vinyl bag, completing a package that looks, feels and even smells good!

After choosing colors, players alternate removing discs from the bag and stacking
them on the table to form a pyramid. Players place whatever discs they draw from
the bag, be they their own or their opponent’s. Discs can be placed directly onto
the table, or atop two other previously placed discs. The base of the pyramid must
contain 8 discs, but discs can be placed in higher rows before finishing the bottom
row. The idea is to try to place your own discs in positions where they can be
easily removed, while placing the discs of your opponents in positions that make
them difficult to grab.

When the pyramid is complete, the tower building begins with players alternating
removing one disc and placing it atop the top disc in the pyramid. However, they
have a time limit in which to accomplish this feat. The wooden box itself is stood
on end and used as a timer. A series of tracks run along this inside of the box,
ending in a chute. A marble is dropped into the box, and the marble rolls along the
tracks, eventually rolling into the chute and reaching the end. A player must
remove and place a disc, and grab the marble before it reaches the end of the
chute. Failing to do this in time results in a victory for one’s opponent.

Player alternate doing this until either one player fails to grab the marble in
time, or the tower tumbles.

As the tower grows, it become more precarious. Not only is the height of the tower
a factor, but the supporting pyramid will also be growing unstable. This occurs
rather quickly, so the game is quite short in duration. That’s a good thing, as it
doesn’t grow stale.

While quite clever, the timing mechanism really doesn’t add that much pressure to
the proceedings. It takes a handful of seconds for the marble reach the bottom.
While that seems quick, it really does allow enough time for a player to remove and
place a disc. The “clack” sound the marble makes while it drops from track to
track, however, can add a psychological sense of urgency that really isn’t necessary.

For dexterity game fans, Wallamoppi is a nice addition to the genre. Its strengths
are quick play, attractiveness, decent price and some challenge. Plus, it will
certainly make an attractive game to display in your game room or on your coffee
table. It isn’t as challenging as other dexterity games I’ve played, but it is
still amusing. Your biggest challenge will be trying to explain why kiwis are
intent on building a tower!

When playing the game Jenga, there is one thing about it
that drives
me utterly mad. It's watching "Greg" play. He'll begin to
take his
turn by walking around the table for several minutes. Then,
after
what seems to have been an indeterminable amount of time, he
cautiously touches one block. No, not that one. He touches
another -
whoops, not that one either. This goes on for a while, as
he gently
caresses the entire structure. Finally, he's found the block he
wishes to move. Slowly, with the speed of an anorexic sloth, he
pushes the block carefully, ever so gently. Finally, he has
the block
halfway out. But perhaps another angle would help? So he
treads
carefully to the other side of the table and begins the
process from
that side, only slower. At this point, every nerve in your
body is
screaming, "Greg, just move the piece already!" So you go
shopping,
eat supper, and come back just in time for Greg to decide he
really
wants to move another piece. This, dear readers, is why I'm
not a fan
of Jenga.

This is not the case of Wallamoppi (Out
of the Box Publishing - 2006
- Garrett Donner and Michael Steer)! My personal name of it
is "Fun,
speed Jenga". With incredibly high quality components, a
nifty and
gimmicky marble ramp, and short playing time - Wallamoppi
has replaced
Jenga forever for me, giving those blocks to my children to
play with.
Wallamoppi is a simple dexterity game for two people and
fills that
niche quite well, also being a fun game to observe.

The wooden box that Wallamoppi comes in opens up to form
a marble
ramp, which holds two black marbles at the bottom. A pile of
thirty-six disks, half a dark brown, the other a light tan,
are mixed
into a bag, and a chute is connected to the end of the
marble ramp.
Players now set up the "wall" of the game and determine
which player
plays the dark pieces, and which plays the light pieces.
One dark and
light disk are set aside, and then the two players take
turns randomly
pulling a disk from the bag, and placing it next to another
disk on
the wall. The wall is made up of eight disks on the bottom,
then
seven, then six, etc. The last two spots of the wall are
taken up by
the two disks set aside, with the light disk on the top,
forming the
bottom piece of the "tower". The dark player then prepares
to take
the first turn.

To start the dark player's turn, the light player drops
the marble
into the top of the marble ramp. The dark player must then
pull a
disk from anywhere in the wall and place it on top of the
tower. He
then grabs the marble before it falls into the hole at the
end of the
chute and drops it into the top of the tower. This signals
that it's
the light player's turn, and they must place a tan disc on
top of the
tower before the marble reaches the end of the ramp.

Turns alternate, as players drop the marble into the top
of the
tower, and the other player frantically scrambles to place a
disk at
the top of the tower. Players may only use one hand and may
knock
other disks off the wall with no retribution. If, however,
a player
causes the tower to fall or allows the marble to drop in the
hole at
the end of the chute before they finish placing a piece,
they lose the
game. The other player wins!

Some comments on the game...

1.) Components: Excellent, tremendous quality of game
components -
I'm amazed that the suggested retail price is only twenty
dollars.
The good-sized wooden box just manages to hold
the very nice black "leather" bag, the rules, and the marble
chute.
The disks, while not always the same color (different wood
grain and
all), are very easy to distinguish between light and dark -
the darker
ones looking like chocolate. Each disk has a diameter of
about four
centimeters and a width of a little over a centimeter,
making them
nice and chunky to deal with. There's some flamingo artwork
on the
game, which is nice; although I'm not sure what in the world
that has
to do with the game. Great, beautiful components.

2.) Marble Tower: The marble ramp, of course, is the main
attraction
of the game. As a kid, I loved to set up complicated marble
ramp
setups with racecar tracks, cardboard tubes, etc. This
marble ramp
isn't quite that complicated in Wallamoppi, but it's enough
to create
tension. According to my watch, the entire process of the
marble
dropping takes about four seconds. Each time the marble
drops down to
another level causes the tension to ratchet up, as the
marble clinks
down, down, down. I guess a timer could have been used,
but would
that have been as cool as the ramp? The marble occasionally
comes off
the ramp at wrong points, especially if the floor or table isn't
level; but by using the rules leaflet, I was able to tilt it
correctly
each time. The game rules suggest that for a "light"
version, players
can simply take turns without the timer. See my initial
paragraph of
this review to see if I've ever done that. The tower makes
the game.

3.) Rules: Besides being used as a tower adjustor, the
three pages of
rules are clear, giving specific details on exactly how to
move disks.
The game is very easy to teach, although the setup phase
might not
make sense to new players the first time they play. When
teaching a
new player, or playing for the first time, I would recommend
just
randomly pulling the disks out of the bag. This might make
the game
slightly lopsided in one player's favor, but the game is so
quick it
doesn't matter.

4.) Dexterity: Speed dexterity is something I can
handle, because I'm
fairly bad at games that require a player to move very
slowly (Hamster
Rolle, etc.) If you dilly-dally at all during the course of
a game,
the marble drops, and you lose. That is what separates the
game from
other dexterity games. The disks ARE easier to pull out
than the
blocks in Jenga, but with the short time limit, things are much
tenser, and much harder.

5.) Fun Factor: There's not much more I can say about
the game.
Deciding which block to pull out is important, but you
really don't
have that much time to think about it - just pull one out
already!
The fact that the game ends quickly (setting up takes longer
than the
actual game) is a good one, and it's a great game to pull
out when two
players are waiting for the rest of the group to show up at game
night. Teenagers and adults that I've taught the game to
enjoyed it
greatly.

Is Wallamoppi the best dexterity game I've ever played?
No. But it
does have a bit of uniqueness, namely the marble tower. The
fact that
the tower is the box for the game is pretty impressive, and the
components are great to handle, use - and just look quite
nice when
set up on a coffee table. It's a good deal for a good,
quick game.
And with the ability to whip this game out, I'll never be
subjected to
playing Jenga again.

Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"

Other Resources for Wallamoppi:

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